The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - The Biggest Little Disappointment

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

This episode: to mark the release of an update (sort of?) to Netflix's big, farmy 2018 hit The Biggest Little Farm, herein we review both the original documentary (Netflix) and an update, called The Return of the Biggest Little Farm, which dropped on Disney+ on Earth Day. Also: another installment of The Farmer Questionnaire!This episode was produced by Jordan Marr & Philippa Mennell.

Hey everyone, I'm Jordan Marr and this is the Ruminant Podcast, which is a show about farming and food production and it's for everyone. You can find out more at theruminant.ca. All right, let's do a show. So we're trying out a new segment on the Ruminant today and this segment that you may hear from time to time on the show is going to be focused on kind of like our take on pop culture reviews. Only those reviews will be focused on a segment of pop culture that focuses on farming and food

and all that kind of stuff. And I'm joined by my relatively new co-producer, Philippa Menel. Hey, Philippa. Hey, Jordan. So, Philippa, we're going to talk about The Biggest Little Farm, produced by Netflix and released in 2018, and then we're going to be talking about an update

to The Biggest Little Farm, which was produced by Disney Plus and was released like a week or so ago on Earth Day. The Biggest Little Farm, many listeners will know and have probably seen, was a documentary that came out in 2018 on Netflix, directed by a guy called Jon Chester. The movie tells the story of Jon and his partner Molly's decision as non-farmers to purchase a farm. Molly's got a background as a chef, and for reasons that the film gets into in great detail they decide to buy this dead piece of soil it's a 200 acre farm that has been essentially destroyed by the farmers that came before them they buy this 200 acres with a vision to have a super super biodiverse farm that produces a little bit of everything using what they refer to as traditional farming practices they hire a guy called alan york who i wasn't aware of personally but clearly based on googling was a really well respected and well known biodynamic farming consultant with clearly with an interest in

permaculture I say was because as we learn halfway through the film Alan tragically dies after being instrumental in helping Molly and John kind of build this farm so the film essentially takes us through about seven years of Molly and john and alan and others building this farm into something beautiful rebuilding the soil integrating all of these different species and kind of the ups and downs of doing that what starts off as a set of ideals turns into like the makings of something beautiful but soon they start to encounter various problems involving fire and pests and disease and kind of molly and john realize they've they've kind of in a lot of ways bitten off more than they can chew um and so they kind of take us through all of that so philippa i thought maybe we could start

with something that i don't think will be very controversial um the film is visually stunning. Yeah, it's absolutely beautiful. It's, it's so like pleasing to watch and just the number of amazing shots that they capture, especially I found out the animals. It's no, no wonder hearing that he's a an animal cinematographer or that he's had a lot of experience in that area i found some of the the shots they managed to get were just remarkable and yeah it's it's a very beautiful film if you just take the film on its cinematography i mean you don't want it to end john and his his crew were clearly obsessive about what they wanted to record and did record. You get all kinds of beautiful aerial shots. You get slow motion shots.

You get time-lapse shots. And you just see some images that I had never seen. You get a close-up of a hawk soaring through the air and catching a starling that's, that's eating fruit in one of their trees. You get like an super closeup of a fly in a cow patty and like the fly actually digesting the shit in the patty. It was just, it was unbelievable. And, and, and for that reason alone, whether you end up loving or hating the film it's worth watching. And I, I have a hard time believing anyone would disagree with that yeah yeah i think it's this great opportunity to to see also

into a farm that you know you might not have the chance to otherwise visit or or experience and also just like you said some of the amazing shots get enable you to see it at a level that we definitely wouldn't experience. So yeah, it's just a kind of a fun ride, in terms of a film in that way. And yeah, I would recommend it on the visuals alone. I think another case or kudos that the film deserves is I think it is a half decent advocate for farming practices that attempt to strike some kind of a balance and include lots and lots of diversity. So I say I mean, balance between the farming species and the wild species that are integrated on the farm and just diversity in general i mean john and molly encountered like

tons and tons of challenges but by the end of the film we see that like through patience and perseverance they've they've they've managed to kind of realize some of the balances that can that you can achieve if you're patient and if you put some faith in the idea that given time nature will will kind of create balance in a given ecosystem and if we're kind of only judging the film on that measure on just like a snapshot of that type of of approach to farming i think like it makes a strong case that that with enough patience and perseverance absent the other factors one must consider when trying to have a profitable farm um it makes a pretty good case for for how those practices can work what do you think yeah i think that's true i think i think like one of the most compelling

elements of of the film is you know they make the in terms of healthy soil and diverse crops and a sort of a habitat that is thriving will enable diversity of animal life to thrive within it as well. diversity of animal life to to thrive within it as well and i think that that that is made that argument's made so well just visually um in terms of what we see in the beginning of this very kind of decrepit and diminished landscape and then by the end this sort of garden of eden kind of this sort of Garden of Eden kind of picture of their farms with everything. Seemingly in balance. Seemingly in balance. The one criticism I sort of have is that they kind of present, in terms of some of the animal species entering the picture as almost answers to to problems that they have also

each presented um you know the the ducks taking care of the snails the um the predator hawks taking care of the overabundance of marmots and and starlings andlings and owls taking care of the marmots, etc. I just think there is an oversimplification of that to some extent in that I'm sure that those continue to be challenges that they don't really address in terms of how did those various issues, which probably continue to some extent in terms of little imbalances here and there, um, continue to either prove problematic for them in some ways, or, you know, how, how did they continue to monitor those and keep things in check? Well, that, that touches on like one of my largest concerns with the film, which is that, um, I think as a farmer who kind of has seen how the sausage gets made,

um, it's hard, it's hard to, um, it's hard to believe that things kind of wrapped up as tidy as they did, you know, and, and it just had me wondering in a number of ways, like what, what they were leaving out, what they were, what they were choosing not to show in, in, in kind of, um, in service of telling like a really feel good story that like progresses from chaos towards balance or, or whatever. Um, Philippa, can we talk about, I know we both kind of have thoughts about, about how they frame the practices they're using on this farm. They describe what they're doing is like hearkening back to traditional farming practices. How did you feel about their use of that term?

I found that a bit problematic and I, I wish that, I wish that throughout the film, actually, they would have taken a bit more of a specific approach in terms of describing their practices and also just the philosophies they were employing or the strategies they were employing. Yes, I found the use of traditional farming. I think they use this term a fair bit, especially in the beginning of the film, where they describe it as traditional farming, having a traditional farm from the past. farm. In what sort of history would I have found this farm? I couldn't imagine what their concept of this was and sort of what the standard practices were that they were sort of hearkening back to. Eventually, my notion of this became that they were they were using this in in in sort of contrast to current industrial monocropping you know large-scale agriculture practices and I just in that sense I just I think it was very sort of a vague description and a vague concept. And I think it would have served us better and been more interesting if they'd used specific terms like biodiversity, sustainable, biodiverse, regenerative practices. biodiverse regenerative practices and and i mean they definitely give the impression that they are conscious of attempting to create a workable ecosystem but there there was nothing in the

film that really gave me the impression they were aspiring to or maybe they were aspiring but that was really approaching what may have been true to the ecosystem in their surroundings prior to, you know, years of agricultural development in that area or whether that would even be possible. or whether that would even be possible. And in fact, yeah, in fact, they kind of, they kind of touched on the opposite of, of integrating in a sense. I mean, there's a point when like right in the middle of their arc, as they build this farm, they're, they're right in the middle of, of, of what is still, but, but at the time was a particularly severe portion of california's ongoing drought and and the narrator john the director who also narrates makes the point that

like they're using too much water for this to have the farm that they want to have you know and if that throughout the drought continues they're not he kind of implies they're not going to be able to keep doing that that's sort of what you're getting at isn't it um yeah i mean i'm yeah exactly i'm getting at the fact that their landscape the the sort of conditions of their landscape are not necessary they don't seem to factor in a great deal in terms of their design or their concept of what the ecosystem is that perhaps they're working with. Their concept seems to be of creating an ecosystem that they would then encourage to be, you know, biodiverse. you know, biodiverse.

And I, and I could be wrong in that because we don't really get, you know, I could be speculating there too much because I think we just don't get enough information about the details. No. And that's sort of what I was getting at before, you know, like if you only judge, if you only look at this film as like just just making a really great case for in the telling of a tidy story about building this incredible farm. And I mean, I could start in numerous places, Philippa, but I know we both wanted to talk about the economic side of this. So let's talk about that. I mean, early in the film, we learned that Molly and John can't afford this farm on their own. So we learned that they find through networking, they find an investor.

And that's about all we know. We don't know how much money they put in. We don't know what the farm costs. We know very little. And that's about as much as we learn about the economics of the farm in the whole movie. Yeah. And that was really as much as we learn about the economics of the farm in the whole movie. Yeah. And that was really difficult, I found. Like, I felt that to be an ongoing sort of problem or big question mark throughout.

Did you also sort of? It never left my mind. Once you're about 20 minutes in and realize what the kind of film you're watching, as a critique of a certain set of farming practices that they're very critical from very high up like an overshot of the farm as they're like the amount of terraforming and other permacultural techniques they did all i could think of is like they're spending millions of dollars millions right um and and so as a critique of you, industrial practices and that the kind of practices that I know that they're in opposition to, it's blunted because, um, because a lot of the decisions that get made towards industrial practices have to do with the reality of turning a profit. And we just never learn what's happening with their books, um, at yeah and and i think there is one reference somewhat early on in their journey with alan where they mentioned that like they they'd sort of blown a large part of their budget

in a relatively short period of time or in a much shorter time than they'd anticipated but there's no sense of the consequence of that you know like it didn't sort of we don't then cut to a shot of them like you know the classic sitting at a table with receipts crunching numbers um trying to trying to figure out how to make it work um we don't get a sense anywhere throughout the film of like what their degree of accountability is in terms of the the expenses um functionally factoring into their decision making processes and and i think that that is, that is really what bothered me, I think, throughout the film, because a lot of the ways in which they approach various problems on a typical farm would be very much informed by the need to make a profit or the need to at least minimize expense. I mean, for me, one of the most frustrating scenes

or issues related to that was the damage done to their soft fruit crops. And I believe that goes on over a period of years where they lose a significant portion to starling damage. They were saying 70%. Bird damage. Yeah, they built this incredible orchard with literally dozens and dozens of different tree species.

Yeah. But then like within a year, the starlings set in and they're losing massive amounts, like 70% plus of their fruit to starling damage. Yeah, and the inputs on that must have been, you know, even just the labor inputs on that must have been you know even just the labor inputs on that must have been astronomical to to then not be able to to have saleable fruit uh it just seemed kind of like to me that just seemed irresponsible

at some level but then again you know you don't know what, what their various tolerances are. Well, I mean, we, I guess effectively we do, but I don't understand them. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't have a framework for understanding that. Well, you mentioned, you mentioned labor, Philip, and that was another one that like was just ringing in my head the whole time I was watching the film. Early in the film, they make reference to solving the challenge of labor by like attracting young people who want to come and learn. And it was very, to me,

it very clearly rung as like, we're bringing on woofers. Again, you get these aerial shots of this 200 acre farm and you think like, are they just employing an army of volunteers like in exchange for room and board or not even that?

They do give credit through the film to different there's a few different staff um that they have on hand and of course alan's presence for the first half of their journey like helping helping build the farm um but it's just like you know nothing by the end about exactly all you you get lots of shots of young people who are there but again it's framed as like like volunteer help so it all ties back into the economics but that was another one again what what what kept i kept thinking about was like it's clear lit that they've made one of their goals to demonstrate like this this is the farming we should all be doing right like it has a point of view to that extent. And yet without, without revealing these major considerations, right?

Economics, the revenues, the labor, it, it, um, it fails. It fails on that count. Instead, like I say, it's just, what remains is like a demonstration of under certain conditions, you really can do amazing things with integration of diversity on the farm. Well, it's really interesting because I, not sure, I come away from it not entirely sure what its main message is, actually. Because I do agree that I think it is trying to say it is feasible to regenerate the land using these practices. to regenerate the land using these practices but i'm actually not sure that it is saying beyond this particular story about a couple with their individual dream i'm not sure it's trying to say that this kind of farm project or this kind of farming is feasible

that's funny i totally think that's what they're they're going for i mean they they they also i think intended to demonstrate the struggles of farming and there's there's plenty of that in there and actually on that count i was kind of i was somewhat satisfied as a farmer i thought it did a half decent job in certain specific examples shown through the film um of just like the constant curveballs farmers are thrown as they as they try and grow food but i i maybe we disagree on this point i really feel like one of their main kind of intents or messages with this film is that um you know that they are advocating for this this type of farming um that they're making a moral judgment do you think there's a morality to the film i do i absolutely do i think there's

a morality to to the practices i think there's a morality to to their purpose which is to introduce diversity into an otherwise previously monocrop to death piece of land. But I think in terms of the idea that that could also necessarily be or should be a feasible working farm i don't know that they're actually well let's put it this way i don't know what the intention is i can't speak for the intention but to me it's not a successful argument and it's largely not a successful argument due to the lack of detail made on that point. Like we have we really have no sense by the end of this film as to how this farm is is really put together or functioning from a business perspective. And look, maybe maybe this is a good place to break and say you know maybe we're going to find out so the way we've structured our conversation together philippa just for the benefit of the

listeners is that um we've both watched the original film but we have yet to watch up until this moment the update that came out about 10 days ago on earth day um which we're about to go do maybe even together um so I don't know, what do you think? Should we stop here, go watch the film and see if some of these concerns and questions were answered in the update? Sure. Yeah. All right. I'm really curious to see the update. All right. Well, let's go check it out and then we'll come back and finish our conversation. Excellent. Okay, so Philippa, here we are. We've just watched the update and we're going to talk about it,

but we both agree it's probably going to be brief. I'll start. I would love the last 30 minutes of my life back. That was so terrible. I think what we just watched was when Disney knocks on your door and drops a pile of money and says, we need something to coincide with Earth Day. And you have a month. Oh.

So the way I just put it, just as the film ended, was that wasn't an update. That was just a really saccharine, cheesy, extended ending of the last film. There was literally no update to the Biggest Little Farm update that Disney just released super disappointing and like yeah what is it called let me see oh it's called the return oh the return

the return but still it still holds there's no return i mean yes the return of rehashed filming from the return to our old footage i guess we got a bit of an update on Emma the sow who now sucks at raising her young. I really want to, yeah, let's just dispense with the waste of time we just watched. Don't watch it, everyone. Go and watch the first film if you haven't. It's totally worth it. The return on Disney Plus is is garbage like true garbage um maybe well it really does play as almost like an extended trailer to i don't know like you and i

both were sort of debating whether or not this is uh a precursor to maybe a a more like like a series i thought i saw somewhere read somewhere that maybe there's going to maybe a more like, like a series. I thought I saw somewhere, read somewhere that maybe there's going to be a series about these folks. I don't even think we've mentioned their farm is called apricot. Hey everyone, Jordan cutting in during editing. So I've done some Google sleuthing and indeed national geographic. We'll be producing a series,

an ongoing series about the biggest little farm for Disney Plus. So it would appear that this so-called update or return that was released on Earth Day on Disney Plus is maybe meant to be more of a harbinger of a series to come. of a harbinger, of a series to come. Weirdly, they make no reference to that in the advertising leading up to the Earth Day release that we just watched or in the release itself. There's just no indication of an upcoming series. So I guess the joke's on us, but maybe the joke's on them

because in watching this half hour return um hopefully we can prevent you from wasting any of your life watching many more hours of the series to come because if the return is any indication john and his co-producers are taking a turn towards um they're really turning up like the saccharin knob and, um, they really want to give you lots and lots of cases of the feelies and just get even farther away from like anything remotely factual and practical about the farming they're doing there. So I guess, I guess we've hopefully performed some service for you and that's it. I'll get back to the conversation I had with Philippa. There's just a couple of minutes left and then we'll be doing a farmer questionnaire. Okay. Bye. I, I think maybe I'll bring it in for a

landing thusly. I, with the first movie and just definitely more with this one i think first and foremost this was um made as something to be a form of entertainment and a feel-good piece like i it's it's first a piece of cinema and second a piece of documentation right and that was my main one of my main issues with the main movie was that the documentation often took a backseat to making the, the whole experience cinematic. And that was great for the imagery, but not so great in how they sacrificed facts and left a lot out in order to

tell a series of really tiny anecdote, tidy anecdotes that built together into a really tidy narrative. Yeah. But in that, in like making it that tidy and feel good, it's, it's really just not, it's, it's, it's, it's, it can hardly be considered a documentary, you know? Yeah, I agree. And you know, in watching this, it caused me to think too about, about some of that, about some of those decisions made in the original film, and how it wouldn't have taken that much to create a bit more information or introduce a bit more information into the sort of the document quality of the film like I understand that it is like I

agree with you that it is more of just a cinematic experience and it is more of a film I think made for people who maybe haven't had that much exposure to to agriculture to farming practices who but who have an interest in food who have an interest in where their food is grown and who have an interest perhaps in environment in environmental issues and and wanting to to see a feel-good sort of story about our ability to to produce something really beneficial like this story seems to be um but it wouldn't have taken that much you know know, like I was thinking, even if they'd gone into sort of the level of detail of just telling us a few of the plants they used in their cover crops, a few of the varieties of vegetables that they were planting and growing. And, you know, some of the just basic details around a bit more around how they produce their compost tea and what it means for them to be using that on or a regular basis or

address the criticism that came with what was like a movie that, that tapped into the popular culture or show us the impact that that documentary has had on other farms and farming practices. Instead, we just got this. You mean in this, in the followup in the one we just watched. Yeah.

In the return. Um, anyway, I think absolutely. I mean, I almost feel like we can't even, we can't even sort of take a real meaningful, critical approach to this one. It just makes me realize that in calling it the return,

that was a very conscious decision because there's nothing approaching an update in there. So I guess the joke's on us for not appreciating that subtlety of titling. Yeah, true. Anyway, ruminant listeners, there's your first pop culture review. Hope you like it.

Go watch the first. Don't watch the second. Have a good day, everybody. That was fun. Thanksilip thanks jordan all right to close out today's show we've got another installment of a segment that has taken the ruminant podcast by storm. It's the Farmer Questionnaire. My name is Kevin Morin and I'm the general manager at McGill's McDonald Campus Farm. Name a farming mentor and something they taught you.

all on Campus Farm. Name a farming mentor and something they taught you. I've had many farming mentors, but one that I really appreciate is Al Stewart. And he had the operation called Stewart's Organic Farm in the Atlas Valley, which is the longest running organic farm in Nova Scotia. Though now he's the owner and operator of Horton Ridge Malthouse. And what he taught me is that everything is plastic. And what I mean by that is that if you're in the middle of a field and you need a screwdriver and there's no tools, you know, find a little stick that has the kind of like Phillips head, looks like it, and use that.

This might sound kind of silly, but, you know, there were so many times that summer where we just improvised tools with what we had on hand, and I was just amazed that you don't have to go to the store to get a solution. You know, you can just be creative and use what's around you. That was the first time in my life that I saw it used at a whole other extent. And I really try to put that to practice every day. What tool or practice do you use regularly that you'd have a hard time giving up? I would say it would be nonviolent communication because conflict is going to arise on any farm, in any business. And conflict doesn't necessarily have to be bad.

It can be an opportunity to create a bit of friction and then become better friends afterwards or have a better shared understanding of the situation. It gives you tools to dive into conflict and kind of reach a resolution that can be even enjoyable and constructive. And without said guidelines, it can make conflict a very aggressive experience that just can end you in the rubble. What's one of your favorite breeds or cultivars? You know, I really like North Country Cheviot sheep, mostly because they're, you know, good lammers, you know, they kind of just take care of themselves. But I also just find their faces really cute. And I'm a sheepskin tanner and their fleeces are, you know, pretty fair quality. The only thing I don't like about them is they can be pretty flighty sheep. They're not the calmest.

So in terms of handling them, you know, it's a lot easier done with a herding dog. How do you maintain balance in your life? You know, I think I have to calm down in the winter during planning phase because every, I'm one of those people that really loves the winter when you're just taking it easy and planning. But, you know, once summer comes around, you might not have as much energy as you thought you did. So just being realistic during planning seed makes the whole year a lot easier. What's your most challenging pest, weed, or predator, and how do you manage it? We have a pretty bad groundhog infestation at the farm, and we're located on the island of

Montreal. We're the last functional dairy farm on the island of Montreal, actually. And we have a total groundhog infestation, which is difficult to control because we can't use a firearm, given that we're within city limits. But also, we're the one farm, you know, outside of a huge metropolitan city. So, you know, a lot of people in their neighborhood, in the neighborhoods, catch groundhogs and come and drop them off on our campus. So, they're never going to be eradicated, but they just have to be controlled. And the same principles as, you know, controlling weeds apply. You know, you want to get them at the right stage. So you kind of want to trap them before they have babies. And we have to use dead traps because if I catch them alive, then I ultimately have to put them down one way or another

because otherwise I'm just passing the pest on to someone else. And yeah, that's how we control them. And they're a pest because not only do they eradicate the cultures or go into greenhouses and eat all the baby plants, but they can actually get in the buildings and do quite a bit of damage there. So they're at a level that they're a problem. And dealing with that pest at the university is kind of a complicated issue because, you know, there's all eyes on us.

Our farm is located between Highway 20 and 40. Public perception is a big problem for us, so we have to do this discreetly and, you know, more or less ethically. So it's not eradication, it's just learning to live with them at a level that we can, you know, still have our operations functional. And then another big pest is geese. You know, sometimes there's hundreds of geese in our fields and they, you know, they eat the soybeans right after they get planted or they'll eat our whole alfalfa crop. And we were, of course, to train dogs to scale those off. What do you consider a great success in your farming career? Well, my biggest success was when I got the opportunity to run a meat processing plant because I had never been in an abattoir before I got to run it.

And we were able to not only run it, but expand the business and add a poultry processing enterprise. Luckily, people really need the service so people were very forgiving in our first few weeks of operation when our quality might not have been highest but we had to learn fast because there was a lot of demand and we I had a great experience learning the trades and providing a service a a much needed service to the agricultural community. Who is someone you'd be most interested to interview about their life or their work? Well, I came across this one author from the Stockman Grass Farmer publication, a great publication, by the way.

And he goes by the name of greg judy i believe he farms in missouri and this guy started farming by actually the first time he farmed he did it like people took like the book told you to do and he was in complete debt and then he ended up starting his uh current farm when he was i think in his mid 40s uh so quite late in life and what he did was he just didn't own anything he rented land and he custom greened his livestock and he was able to do that out there but he really focused on the bare minimum and now he i'm not even sure how many hundred cattle he has but he has a very successful rotational grazing enterprise largely operated on leased land with very simple techniques that are,

you know, very effective. So he has a really great YouTube channel and any grazers out there, I highly suggest them. Okay, that caps another episode of The Ruminant, everyone. I hope you enjoyed it, and I will talk to you in two weeks. TheRuminant.ca is where you can find many more things related to The Ruminant. Okay, goodbye. We bury ourselves in the woods in the country. We're no closer, we never have laundry. We'll owe nothing to this world of thieves.

Live life like it was meant to be. I don't fret, honey. I've got a plan to make our final escape. All we'll need is each other a hundred dollars And maybe a roll of duct tape And we'll run right outside of the city's reaches We'll live off chestnuts, spring water and peaches We'll owe nothing to this world of thieves And live life like it was meant to be Because why would we live in a place that don't want us? A place that is trying to bleed us dry. We could be happy with life in the country.

With salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands. dirt on our hands I've been doing a lot of thinking some real soul searching and here's my final resolve I don't need a big old house or some fancy car

to keep my love going strong so we'll run right out into the wilds and braces We'll keep close quarters with gentle faces And live next door to the birds and the bees And live life like it was meant to be Ba ba ba da ba ba ba Ba ba ba da da da Ah ah ah ah ah ah

Doo doo doo doo doo doo Doo doo doo doo doo doo you